How Pigybak is Giving Contractors Their Weekends Back While Rebuilding Communities
“For every 50 contractors that retire, only seven enter the workforce,” explains Shanna Greathouse, Founder and CEO of Pigybak, a startup at the intersection of social impact and home services. “In 2025, we were already facing a 50,000 employee labor shortage across the US for contractors – and that was before recent policy changes that have only exacerbated the situation.”
This labor shortage represents both a crisis and an opportunity – one that Greathouse and her team at Pigybak are addressing with an innovative platform designed to make contractors’ lives better while helping homeowners get those lingering home improvement tasks accomplished.
A New Approach to Neighborhood Home Services
In an industry dominated by giants like Angie’s List and Thumbtack, Pigybak is carving out a unique niche by focusing on community and efficiency. Their platform uses AI to bundle similar home improvement projects within neighborhoods, allowing contractors to take on multiple jobs in the same area – driving less, working more, and ultimately getting more time with their families.
“We keep our mission at the forefront of really rebuilding communities, one home at a time,” Greathouse shares. “We’re turning neighborhoods into networking powerhouses that allow homeowners to get purchasing power, while taking the things neighbors already do that make a community and digitizing it.”
For homeowners, the platform addresses that universal pain point: the mental burden of a home repair wish list that never seems to get addressed.
“Everyone has that wish list of things sitting there, taking up mental space, that they don’t want to do,” notes Greathouse. “We have a wishlist feature where we put your wishlist to work using AI.”
The process is simple but powerful. Homeowners add items to their digital wish list at no cost. Every morning, Pigybak’s algorithm identifies similar projects within a one-mile radius, bundles them together, and presents the package to highly-rated contractors. Only contractors with four-star ratings or higher can bid, and only one contractor at a time can bid on a bundle, preventing homeowners from being overwhelmed with responses.
Significant Benefits for Contractors
For contractors, the value proposition is compelling. By efficiently grouping jobs in the same neighborhood, Pigybak helps them:
- Improve profitability by up to 12%
- Increase revenue by up to 30%
- Reduce driving time between jobs
- Reclaim their weekends for family time
Greathouse illustrates this with a concrete example: “A concrete company might typically pour a driveway, hoping they’ve brought enough material and then disposing of the rest. With Pigybak, they can pour that driveway and then maybe do a shed next door at the same time. So they’re diverting waste from the landfill, saving fuel, and getting more revenue density in a day.”
This contractor-focused approach is embedded in the company’s ethos. Their mantra – “give contractors their weekends back” – reflects a genuine understanding of the challenges these professionals face.
“Every time a contractor gets to go to a little league game instead of having to work on a weekend, that’s a win,” Greathouse emphasizes.
Environmental Impact Baked In
Beyond the economic benefits, Pigybak’s model has significant environmental implications. By reducing contractor travel between jobs, the platform creates meaningful emissions reductions.
“What we’ve seen translates to the equivalent each year, for one contractor, of planting 30 trees,” explains Greathouse. “We’re targeting 3.2 million contractors in the US – these are those owner-operators with less than five employees. That’s like planting one Yosemite National Park every single year in emissions offsets.”
The company has also committed 5% of its revenue to nonprofits supporting community development and trades education, addressing both immediate needs and long-term industry challenges.
Growth Plans and Strategic Focus
Currently in a pre-launch phase with a grassroots approach to growth, Pigybak is focusing on strategic expansion in 2025. The company is scaling up for Spring with plans to expand into new markets including Ohio, New York’s Long Island area, and even internationally to Dubai.
The Dubai expansion, slated for April, targets unique economic challenges in that market. “Tradespeople tend to not even be able to afford living in the city, so they live about 30 miles away,” Greathouse notes. “Finding a tradesperson to come do a small job is like impossible.”
As the company grows, it’s refining its approach. Initially targeting 13 different home services, Pigybak has narrowed its go-to-market strategy to focus on just four core services, aiming to “curate the best of the best contractors and make it a really great experience” before expanding further.
A Different Kind of Tech Startup
In an industry worth $600 billion, Greathouse believes there’s room for specialized players. “Even Angie is not even a $2 billion company anymore,” she points out. “Everyone’s able to have a piece of the pie, and everyone is very niched.”
Pigybak positions itself as the “bougie” option that makes home improvements “ridiculously convenient.” While Greathouse says TaskRabbit made waves with tasks like IKEA for furniture assembly and Thumbtack thrives on emergency services, Pigybak targets those “nice to have” home improvements that often linger on to-do lists.
The company is currently raising funds, with a particular interest in bringing contractors into their investor base. “We really want contractors to be our early investors so that we can guide our product to be the product for contractors that truly benefits contractors and homeowners together,” says Greathouse.
For a technology startup tackling the inefficiencies of home services, this contractor-centric approach feels refreshingly authentic – and potentially transformative for an industry that affects virtually every homeowner and millions of skilled tradespeople.
As communities nationwide continue to face housing challenges and contractors battle workforce shortages, Pigybak’s community-oriented approach presents an innovative solution that could benefit homeowners, contractors, and the environment alike – one neighborhood at a time.
